Erick and Sally | Page 2

to
mention the three indispensable qualities of the object."
Ritz, the youngest son of the minister, was usually busy thinking of that
which had just happened to him. So just now it had come to his mind,
how this very morning Auntie had arrived. She was an older sister of
his mother and had no home of her own; but made a home with her
relatives. She was a frequent visitor at the parsonage for months at a
time and would help the mother in governing the household. Ritz
remembered especially, that Auntie was particularly inclined to have
the children go to bed in good time--and they had to go--and he also
remembered that they could not get the extra ten minutes from Mother,
for Auntie was always against begging Mother. In fact, Auntie talked
so much about going to bed, that Ritz felt the feared command of
retiring during the whole day. So his thoughts were occupied with these
experiences, and he said after some thinking: "One can make use of an
aunt in a household. She must--she must--she must--"
"Well, what must she? That will be something different from a quality,"

the teacher interrupted the laborious speech of the boy.
"She must not always be reminding that it is time to go to bed," it now
came out.
"Ritz," the teacher said now in a severe tone, "is the school the place to
joke?"
But Ritz looked at the teacher with such unmistakable fright and
astonishment, that the latter saw that it was an honest opinion which
Ritz had made use of in his sentence. He therefore changed his mind
and said more gently: "Your sentence is unfitting and incorrect, for
your three qualities are not there. Do you understand that, Ritz? You
will have to make three sentences at home, all alike; but do not forget
the different qualities. Have you understood me?"
"Yes, teacher," answered Ritz in deepest dejection, for he already saw
himself sitting alone in the evening thinking and thinking and gnawing
on his slate pencil, while Sally and Edi could pursue their merry
entertainments.
Now the end of school was announced. In a short time the door was
opened, and the boys and girls hastened out toward the open place
before the schoolhouse, where suddenly all were crowded together like
a huge ball, from the midst of which came a tremendous noise and
confused shoutings. Something out of the common must have
happened.
"In the house of old Marianne"--"a tremendously rich lady"--"a piano,
four men could not get it in, the door is too narrow"--"a small
boy"--"before we went to school"--It was so confused, nothing could
really be understood. Then a voice shouted: "All come along! Perhaps
they are not through with it, come, all of you to the Middle Lot!" And
suddenly the whole ball separated, and almost the whole crowd ran in
the same direction.
Only two boys remained on the playground and looked at each other,
quite perplexed. The one was stout little Ritz, who long since had

forgotten his great trouble and had listened intently to the exciting,
although incomprehensible story. The other was his brother Edi, a
slender, tall fellow with a high forehead and serious grey eyes beneath.
He was hardly two years older than his brother; but for his not quite
nine years, he was tall, and appeared much older than the
seven-year-old Ritz.
"We must run home quickly and ask whether we too may go; we must
see that, Ritz, so hurry up!" With these words Edi pulled his brother
along, and soon they turned round the corner and also disappeared.
Behind the schoolhouse, near the hawthorn hedge, stood the last of the
crowd in animated conversation. It was Sally, the ten-year-old sister of
the two boys, with her friend Kaetheli, who with great excitement
seemed to describe an occurrence.
"But Kaetheli, I do not know the beginning," said Sally. "Just you
begin at the beginning, from where you saw everything with your own
eyes, will you?"
"Very well, I will, but this time you must pay close attention," said
Kaetheli. "You know that the old blind straw-plaiter lived with the little
girl Meili at old Marianne's? Well, Meili went to school at Lower
Wood. Two weeks ago her father died and Meili had to go to Lower
Wood to her uncle. Then Marianne cleaned the bedroom and the
sitting-room terribly clean, opened all the windows, and afterwards
closed them all again and put on the shutters. She herself lives in the
little room above. But this morning everything was open, and yet
Marianne had said nothing about it to anyone and all people in Middle
Lot were surprised at that. At half-past eleven, just when we were
coming out of school, we saw a wagon coming